Meditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many years sinceMeditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many yeares since

IT follows now, that we enquire farther into the nature of this holy Sacrament, which will be explained by considering the Analogy, fitness, and similitude between the signs, and the things signified by them, and conferred or exhibited together with them, which is Christ the Lord. Now, this Analogy or fitness as it hath been in some general manner expressed in the nature or quality of the elements substantially or physically taken; so more expressly and punctually is it proposed unto us in those holy ^aactions which do alter in the use, and make it a Sacrament. And first we find that Christ took the Bread and Wine, and blessed it, and gave thanks, and so consecrated it, or set a part unto a holy or solemn use,² which is the reason why Saint Paul calls it a Cup ⟨p. 46⟩of blessing; so that unto the Church it ceaseth ^cto be that which nature had made it, and begins to be that unto which the blessing had consecrated it: In like manner did the eternal Son of God assume into the subsistence of his own infinite person, the whole nature of man, the body and the soul, by the virtue of which wonderful union notwithstanding the properties of the divine nature, remain absolutely intransient and uncommunicable unto the humane; yet are there shed from that inexhaustible fountain many high and glorious endowments, by which the humanity under this manner of subsistence is ^danointed,⁵consecrated,^e sealed, and set apart for that work of incomprehensible love and power, the redemption of the world: and secondly as the Bread is taken by us from Christ in the nature of a gift, he brake it and gave it to his Disciples; so is the humane nature taken by Christ from the Father as a gift^f, from the good pleasure of God. Thirdly, as the taking of the Bread by Christ did alter only the manner of its being, the operation, and efficacy, the dignity and use, but no way at all the element or nature of the Bread.